Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I had decided to sell my nurgle army a while back and get a new one that was different that what i normally play. I chose to do a White Scars army. I wanted to do them for the conversions i can have for them. I haven't seen a whole lot of people playing white scars and i'm not sure exactly the best strategy to use with them...

 

basically i have 2 librarians on bikes with 5 squads of 5 bikes...each squad has 1 melta and 1 flamer and 2 squads have a sgt with power fist and plasma pistol...all the other squad sgts have power weapons and plasma pistols. all have expert riders

i also have 9x attack bikes and 3x land speeders. all the attack bikes have multi-meltas and the land speeders have multi-meltas and multi-missiles. attack bikes have tank killer ability and expert riders

so with everything on them it comes up to right around 2500pts. my first chance to try 'em out will be at the 'ard boy tourney at my LGS.

just wanting some help with tactics. i know i will have plenty of speed/mobility but i just want some pointers from anyone who's played the army before. i also have models to get me up to 6k points for apocalypse....so a total of 60 bikes, each squad with melta and flamer. 21 attack bikes with multi-meltas, 12 land speeders with multi-melta and multi-missile and 2 each of librarian and chaplain on bike.

 

 

any help would be appreciated!

Anybody who played Scars in third edition immediately dropped them like a plague infested rat after the current codex hit the shelves (this group includes me). I don't know of anybody who plays them currently, as their current traits are somewhat useless and/or completely contradictory to their fluff. Good luck with your army ( this is in no way meant to be sarcastic, I truly hope you enjoy playing the Scars), and if YOU have any revelations about the list after the tourney, please share them.

4th Ed White Scar rules broke my heart. Was just a travesty.

That said, The best way I found to play them was lots of slashing attacks, feints, basically running circles around your opponents before you charge at them.

Of course, the loss of hit and run was the biggest hurt in the new list.

I'd say play lots of game with the sole purpose of the best way to use your army. Don't worry about winning or losing, just work on your tactics, and use lots of cover.

I've looked into bike-based Marine armies a couple times, and there's really no way to make them better than second or third tier in terms of competetiveness. That said, they can be awesomely characterful armies and have lots of room for creativity.

Fat Bloke [Paul Sawyer of White Dwarf fame] built up a cool Scars army without the aid of special rules -- he used a lot of bikes, but supplemented them with mobile Marine elements, like Scouts, Rhino/Razor Tactical Squads, and Assault Marines. See if you can dig some of his old stuff up.

Oh, and one fun idea: in the new rules, a bike-based Marine army could make a good cannon-spam opportunity -- bikes with teleport homers supported by six Tornadoes and a squad or two of Terminators. What is it that most appeals to you about the Scars?

-Adso

depending on what youlike to play and where it provides for alot of variety.

i wrote up a speeder heavy list for a scars player just to see what i could do with it at 1850

libby on a bike with force weapon, mantle and fury

2X5 man bike squads with skilled rider and some special weapons

9 land speeder tornados

3 forgeworld land speeder tempests tofill the heavy slots

23 models with enough firepower to make them effective.

 

as it happens i love speeders and i am an old pure ravenwing player. if your playing a fast marine bike/speeder army you have to play to thier strengths.

they do 1 thing really well-mobile overwhelming firepower. a strike force

rather you go bike heavy or speeder heavy or an even mix, you must use your mobility to concentrait on small sections of your enemies force and whipe it out ,  your mobile firepower is what makes up for your small numbers and fragile units.

my old RW force had 2X 3 man bike squads with a HB attack bike, 3X 3 man attack bike squads (with HB), the master of the RW speeder , and 3 squads of 3 each tornado speeders with HB/AC. the list performed incredibly well (its amazing what 21 HBs will do to an enemy army) and won a majority of its games before the new dex killed it.

I am not a huge fan of land speeders, but that is mainly because i hate putting the buggers together.

never really liked the heavy bolters for my guys though...it sounds great but i have always preferred meltas. seeing that i'm mainly having meltas i chose to put in flamers because i figured i will end up getting close enough to the enemy to be able to use them effectively. so i chose meltas, flamers, multi-meltas and multi-missiles. if i had the money for tempests i would LOVE to use 'em.

 

I'm in the process of getting all my bikes, attack bikes, librarians, chaplains and land speeders together. i will be able to take about 6000pts total so i will be able to have a fun army for apocalypse and not a severely broken/cheesy army IMHO. I could have gone necrons for apoc but i chose white scars as i've never done a imperial army before. and i liked the idea of running 60 bikes, 15-21 attack bikes, 12 speeders and 2 librarians and 2 chaplains...all on bikes or land speeders. so 12 flamers, 12 meltas, 27-33 multi-meltas and 12 multi-missiles sounds like a lot of fun and it keeps to some of the fluff (what they didn't kill in 4th ed marines) for the chapter.

You'll do a lot better as ravenwing than whitescars, imho. That's one thing Ravenwing does OK -- they all scout, they're fairly reasonably priced (shoulda been 2-5 cheaper imho, but hey), and can split squads up for multiple small units.

I've thought about doing the ravenwing idea...but a lot of people here already do ravenwing and i wanted to do an army that no one else does around here. i know they somewhat nerfed the white scars with the 4th ed update, but i think it is still a viable list and at the very least i will have fun playing it

Thanks!!!!

Las/plas squads with a lascannon razorback would be pretty useful, then, and I'd also suggest not using any flamers on your bikes, or wasting pts on plasma pistols.

Whirlwinds/predators are a great, cheap choice for anti-infantry.

Posted By Longshot on 09/14/2007 1:10 PM
You'll do a lot better as ravenwing than whitescars, imho. That's one thing Ravenwing does OK -- they all scout, they're fairly reasonably priced (shoulda been 2-5 cheaper imho, but hey), and can split squads up for multiple small units.

its a trade off RW get sout and fearless but they loose wargear and more importantly skilled rider.

thats a pretty tough trade.

im also not a fan of assaulting with bikes because they perform better shooting. but if you have a cover hugging opponant like IG, flamers are golden.

 

PS on the tempest

the scars created it as a heavy spport unit to keep up with thier combat doctrine and they are very effective. modeling wise as FW models go they are pretty cheep and alot easier to put together than the normal speeder kit(getting the damn top/bottom halves to go together   they also don't fill a fast slot so you can load up on regular speeders.

Posted By mughi3 on 09/15/2007 1:32 AM

and alot easier to put together than the normal speeder kit(getting the damn top/bottom halves to go together  

So it wasn't just the kit I bought that was warped or something  - that was one of the worst kits I've ever tried putting together and put me off getting more.

yeah you actually have to rubberband he top and bottom together till the glue sets. other than that its a pretty easy kit. the tempest is one solid piece though so its alot easier.

First off ignore all of the naysayers, White Scars rock and more importantly are a fun list to play that is rarely seen.

I have been playing WS for quite a while and was also initially dismayed by the loss of Hit and Run as well as their lovely holy relic.  But after changing my tactics I think they are now a more effective list.  In the past the special rules made me want to play them like light cavalry when in fact they are pretty kick a$$ heavy cavalry.

Here are the lessons that I had to learn the hard way.

-You will need a couple of small units of infantry to hold your home edge/quarter.  I recommend two squads of min las (and maybe plas if you have the points) in small games and add a dev squad with missile launchers for medium sized games.  Alot of the time I just hide these guys if they have no juicey hard targets since their main job is not to die or stray from my home base.

-All bikes need skilled rider. And I mean all of them. You will be amazed how often you will be able to zip through some terrain to get a charge, side/rear melta shot or both. Folks just get used to large blocks of terrain being sufficient to protect a flank.  The difference between 1/6 dead and 1/36 means you can effectivly ignore intervening terrain.

- In  bike squads: use homogenous special weapons and always max them out.  This way you can send a BS at optimal targets and very effectively destroy it.  Likewise if you add attack   bikes always add the appropriate type HB to flamer squads and Meltas to Melta squads.  I tend to only use attached attack bikes in big games but thats just me.  In most take on all comers lists I play with 2x flamer squads and 2xmelta squads.

-All bike seargents should be vets with fists and pistols.  This is what really puts the HEAVY in heavy cav   This is what allows your flamer squads to stay versatile, they are now always a threat to everything (except skimmers, damn their floaty xeno tech ).  Never use plasma pistols as you will ideal spend turn 2+ in CC and you dont want risk a burn on your very expensive and missile critical seargents.

-Always take two bike characters with powerweapons and bps.  If you have points combi meltas or melta bombs are nice too.  The prime use for these boys is to snipe out enemy powerfists in CC, with your huge moves you should always be able to set up near ideal charges against all but the most willy opponents.  Power Fists are the bane of your existance and to win you must root them out fast to avoid hostile gruesomeness being directed at you.

-Speaking of which: Always pick unfair fights.  You should be able to get two bike squads and one character on single enemy MEQ suads, or single squads on enemy squads that dont have power fists.  If an enemy unit doesn't have a PF you can tie it up with a single squad and then overrun in a turn or two.

-Terrain is your best friend.  Deny LOS as much as possible on the way in. You will always have small lists when your average trooper is 37ish points.  Keep everyone out of LOS if possible during set up.  With skilled rider you can (fairly) safely move through intervening woods/ruins on turn one.

-Turbo boost is your other  friend who is less fickle but also less cool than your best freind.  In a worst case scenario and you have a pretty open table (yuck), you can turbo everything at the enemy.  In most cases if you get 50% of your bikes into contact with the enemy you should win, so unless you roll badly turbo boost will do this for you.  It is also nice to set up your bikes across the table (hopefully getting your opponent to set up in a wide deployment as well), then use turbo to put all of the bikes on enemy flank leaving the rest of the enemy force whistleing in the breeze with little/nothing to do for a few turns.

-Every unneeded man down is a tragedy to be avoided as much as possible.  Hench the use of terrain and turbo comments above.

-That being said this is a BOLD army, when the time comes to kick the door in dont be afraid to commit everything, ideally on one (and only one) flank.  The goal is to get most of your bikes into combat (guns blazing away on the way in) against chosen targets that you will out number and outpower locally things will go well for you.

-This is an Initiative Controlling army.  If you dont want to get into CC there are very few lists that can make you.  When playing evil Khorne lists and the like  you can avoid CC until you are sure you can win or your opponent starts to cry and you take pity on them. Or not

-Personally with such an expensive army, I find that I need my speeders to be of the AC&HB variety to help out with horde thinning some of the time, but since their main goal is to hide and do last turn objective/quarter nabbing missions. 

-For those who say that RW is better, I have the following irrefutable arguments against them:

1. Good guys wear white.
2. Mustachios and scalplocks are cooler than feathers
3. Chicks dig chapters that dont have their own codex, its a rebel bad boy thing.
4. Playing White Scars allows (some might even say requires) you to break out your best/worst mexican accent.  Ever hear of the real life bike gang called the Mongols...?
5. Last but not least: John Wayne played Ghengis Khan in a movie, and the math is simple John Wayne + Ghengis Khan = White Scars Primarch.  He's not dead, he's in  a cryogenic tank with its timer set  for another 38,000 years....

Ok thats it go play WS.

Axhead made my day, but I like to talk so I'm going to re-iterate/throw my 2c in. I play WS too so here we go. Note that I do things differently with my bikes, I take two 4 man squads w/ a Heavy Bolter attack bike attachment, and an Elites choice with Furious Charge, and a Commander on a bike.

1) Bikes get Frag Grenades for free, Terrain + Skilled Rider is your friend.
2) Heavy Support is your friend. So are Landspeeders.
3) Two or three small Tactical squads are cheap and effective. If you like Razorbacks and Rhinos, try and negotiate the use of the new, cheaper points costs. I was using True Grit but I've since decided against it, preferring a more shooty approach.
4) My Commander takes a Thunder Hammer, T5 and Artificer Armour give him a chance to use it. Artificer Armour gives him a 2+ invul if he Turbo Boosts.
5) T5 and 3+ comes in real handy against S3, less so against S4 or S5.
6) Real men don't wear Jumppacks.
7) The only place I would take a Vet is a power weapon weilding Furious Charge Elites choice that Turbo Boosts first turn. Otherwise just run and gun and charge something soft and squishy. If they have points tied up in Veteran Sergeants just keep shooting.

It used to be a core of infantry with bikes as support often winning the day, now it's more like Fire All of Your Guns at Once. Good times. As far as anti-tank is concerned I prefer Devastators w/ Lascannons over Meltaguns/Meltabombs but to each their own. Bikes are 34 points including SR and part of that is a stationary platform TL-Bolter, I like to use them as such. Note that this goes for your characters as well.

Pity that Command Squads can't take bikes.

The best fix for White scars is to take Be Switft As The Wind and a minor disadvantage, preferebly Have Pride In Your Colours (as you are supposed to see them coming). The trajedy of the list is Flesh Over Steel. White Scars were a vehicle heavy list!!! They sghould have room or Razorbacks and Rhinos without losing their Land Speeders and Attack Bikes.

To really make things nasty take Cleans and Purify to keep your infantry mobile with Aspire To Glory because dreads and termies were never the White Scar way anyway.

Do this and the Scars can make a good army, even with bikes prices.

Ignore the fact that you should take the set traits with White Scars. As far as you are concerned they are vanilla marines with traits that happen to resemble White Scars. You wonjt be the first person to replace a sucky chapter ruleset with vanilla.

Changing the WS traits is of course an option if you want to play a list  that could be described as a variant list but it could also be described as..... FILTHY HERESEY!!!!11!!1

In all seriousness (he said while reaching for a fully loaded the promethium canister),  the WS are a tribal army more specifically they are a horse tribe based army.  These guys should be mounted, specificly they should be mounted on bikes.  Everyone else can run guys in transports but only one other chapter can run such bike heavy lists, regardless of the fact that they are into dungeons and feathers.... I dont know about you guys but I try to avoid those kinds of websites, and the people who make them.  But I am kinda old fashioned that way.  Speaking of which I just found that promethium canister  >

 

I am happy to have stumbled on this topic as I just traded for a white scars army! I am curious how the 'ard Boyz went for the op.

And Axhead, you decided for me to paint them as white scars - I was conisdering juicing them up for my Iron Warriors (which has a mongolian theme and naming, by the way).

I think that perhaps a web search is in order....

Any tips on painting them up?

I painted mine up in a cream-white and used a morrocan red for the appropriate bits (I dont use GW paints except for metalics and inks).  One of the reasons that I used a cream white was so that I could apply a brown/black ink wash to everything and highlight up from there.  I didn't want the white to a "clean" white but more of a "been on the road for 2 months and the kumis(fermented mares milk) is running low" white.

One of the things I did that I personally got a kick out of was adding scrape marks on the marines and bikes where they "ditched".  I assume that power armour would make you pretty much immune to road rash although it would play havok on the paint job. This is done by putting on some brown a slightly smaller area of black and some scratchy boltgun metal.  Finally a couple of little mithral highlights.

I distinguish bettween the bike units by using japanese-esqe back banners attached to the seats.  The banners are curved backwards to give a hint of speed to the models.  The bikes themselves have as much in the way of extra ammo packs, grenades, boxes, jerry cans etc as I could reasonably jam on.  I also didn't paint the stowage to match the chapter colours I assume that they scavange as required on the hoof, since they probably wouldn't worry about traditional supply lines.

All of the command figs have different coloured back banners (black for the chaplain, purple for the khan, yellow with white lightning bolts for the Librarian) and some customization work.  For example the chaplain has greenstuffed mustachios and top knot (as do all of my helmetless foot seargents), and I converted his crozius for a power tulwar   He also has a big a$$ orc skull tied to the front of his bike.  My tech marine is riding a bike (I use him with the smaller rig) and have mounted the power grip claw thing to the back of the bike on a hydralic unity looking piece.  His body/head/shoulder pad are from the bits that came with the rhino kit (I think).  He has a horse skull on the front of his bike.

Instead of ranting I will try to get some pictures up.  Its not my best painted army (partly since I got most of the figs 2nd hand and painted over the junk I couldnt get off), but it is a definate contender for my favorite. 

Posted By Axhead on 09/26/2007 5:45 PM
One of the things I did that I personally got a kick out of was adding scrape marks on the marines and bikes where they "ditched".

Posted By Axhead on 09/26/2007 5:45 PM

All of the command figs have different coloured back banners (black for the chaplain, purple for the khan, yellow with white lightning bolts for the Librarian) and some customization work.  For example the chaplain has greenstuffed mustachios and top knot (as do all of my helmetless foot seargents), and I converted his crozius for a power tulwar   He also has a big a$$ orc skull tied to the front of his bike.  My tech marine is riding a bike (I use him with the smaller rig) and have mounted the power grip claw thing to the back of the bike on a hydralic unity looking piece.  His body/head/shoulder pad are from the bits that came with the rhino kit (I think).  He has a horse skull on the front of his bike.

Instead of ranting I will try to get some pictures up.  Its not my best painted army (partly since I got most of the figs 2nd hand and painted over the junk I couldnt get off), but it is a definate contender for my favorite. 

Dude, you need to put pictures up someplace, I'd love to see your techmarine.

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 09/26/2007 6:25 PM

Posted By Axhead on 09/26/2007 5:45 PM
One of the things I did that I personally got a kick out of was adding scrape marks on the marines and bikes where they "ditched".

No true White Scar would ever fall off his bike!

No true White Scar would ever fall off his bike!    (Uh how do you quote?)

Well if they are on a nice Emperor Day drive with the wind in their scalp lock, no they probably wouldn't just fall over.  However if the choice was to eat say a krack missile or lascannon beam then maybe they might take "emergency evasive actions" in order to continue serving the Chapter.   Add to that wipe outs caused by frag rounds and it adds up over the course of a campaign.  

I will get around to the photos in a day or two school, work, baby and physio are keeping me on my toes these days